


Inbox Prompt Series

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: Hannibal (TV), The X-Files
Genre: Adult Content, F/M, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-10 17:51:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 48
Words: 12,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4401536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I solicited prompts from my Tumblr account and have been writing very short little ficlets for each, around 200 words apiece. I am posting each one as a chapter as they are finished. Some may contain spoilers for the revival, so please be advised. More info in the notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I used the word drabble on Tumblr, but a drabble is really 100 words, so please forgive my liberal usage. I have placed the prompt I was given and any relevant notes at the top. Unless noted below, all stories are in the X-Files universe.
> 
> Chapter 4 is a Hannibal/X-Files crossover  
> Chapters 8, 27, 28, and 31 are Hannibal  
> Chapter 14 is Adult Content  
> Chapter 21 is AU after Grotesque

[notwidelyunderstooddefinition](http://tmblr.co/mpNBT-4bumVh0FyJ7ar3xZg): Yes, please :D Unremarkable house, M is in his study, S is taking a bath, what are their thoughts? 

***

Sunlight streams on atlases, on cryptic stacks of dog-eared notes. Mulder spins idly in the leather chair Scully got for his birthday last year. She feels strongly about the celebration of birthdays, though she waves him off when asked what she wants for her own upcoming milestone. Fifty, it seems, is not sitting well with her. He has been in contact with someone about a rare translation of Galen, but it feels almost perfunctory. Frustrated, he picks up the cat winding around his ankles.

Down the hall, Scully soaks in a bath that leaves her skin a scalded pink below the water line. Many of her pleasures come with pain, a piece of self-revelation with which she is now comfortable. She has explored this extensively with Mulder, who still makes the requisite Catholic schoolgirl jokes on occasion, but keeps his psychologist’s trap shut on any deeper significance. Besides, he likes to trace the serpent on her back. She’s considered having it removed for years, but it would seem like lying.

The cat wanders into the bathroom and she clicks her tongue at him. When he approaches, she sees a Post-It stuck to his side. Scully reaches out and grabs it.

 

_Roses are red_

_Deoxygenated blood is not actually blue_

_But since I’m colorblind_

_I don’t know if that’s true_

 

Mulder, straining to hear, high-fives himself when she laughs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this isn’t exactly on point for either prompt, but I really have trouble envisioning Scully being with this clown without some ulterior motive. Please forgive me, ladies.

Brut85: Feeling really down about the spoilers, how about a really angsty story S/Tad with Mulder jealous/depressed about it? ugh.

Lindsayleephotog: Mulder finds out about Tad

***

She’s been in her apartment near the hospital for six months now, her little Mata Hari lair where she lives the lie Mulder helped her create. He glimpsed her on the news last night, a flash of copper hair ducking into a limo.

Over by the Dairy Queen there’s a billboard with Tad’s obnoxious face, urging everyone to tune in so that they’ll know who to blame for their problems. He likes to remind people that his big brother the senator is in Washington using his intelligence ties to make the world safer for his very particular brand of freedom. He likes to talk about family values, which Mulder thinks is pretty fucking rich from a single guy with no kids. 

Scully’s probably with him in some dark paneled restaurant now, cool and imperious as a bunch of rich old white men try to catch her eye. He thinks of her hand on Tad’s forearm, her crooked smile reflected in his eyes. He thinks of the two parallel creases across her slim throat and swallows hard. 

He has a flight to Patagonia in two days, then onward to Antarctica, where Scully’s new connections report that four vials of vaccine are buried in the ice


	3. Chapter 3

[lolcat76](http://lolcat76.tumblr.com): After Bad Blood, Scully confronts Mulder's jealousy over Sheriff Hartwell!

***

She slammed her briefcase down, making him jump. “Ants, Mulder,” she said, finger inches from his nose. “Ants everywhere. My clothes, my luggage…and do you know why?”

“No…?

“Well, I’ll tell you. SOMEone put garlic breadsticks in my pockets and left them there. So in addition, I smell like the Olive Garden.” Scully shrugged her coat off, glaring.

He started reloading the stapler. “Perhaps SOMEone was trying to protect you from the undead constabulary.”

This earned a full-body eyeroll. “Here we go with your Sheriff Hartwell fixation again. The man was nothing but helpful during our stay.”

“Sorry, _what_? He _drugged_ you!”

“Not until the end,” she pointed out, prim. “You were obnoxious prior.”

Mulder gaped, incredulous. “That’s your defense? Really? Man, Scully. I would rule out law for your next career.”

She braced her hands on the desk, leaning in to fix him with narrowed eyes. “You just don’t like me having other friends in the sandbox.” She paused, considering. “So to speak.”

He stood, matching her posture. Their fingers brushed. “Your sandbox is none of my business, Scully.”

“Envy’s a deadly sin.” Her coffee-and-cream breath was sweet.

“Yeah?” he asked, voice rough in her ear. “So’s lust.”


	4. Chapter 4

[goodsailingahab](http://goodsailingahab.tumblr.com/): Yes, please! How about a little something where Scully meets Bedelia?

***

They walk up to the immense house, the stone pillars and imposing front door making Scully feel small.

“Should have specialized in psychiatry,” Mulder says, knocking sharply. “All of this could have been yours.”

Scully rolls her eyes as though she hadn’t been thinking the same thing. “You know I love to talk about feelings.”

The tap of high-heeled footsteps, then the door opens a crack. “Yes?” comes a polished voice. No Baltimore accent here.

“Agents Mulder and Scully, Dr. Du Maurier,” Scully says, trying to peer in. “My partner called you earlier, about the background check on your patient. We wanted to follow up.”

“Of course, please come inside.” She opens the door all the way.

Mulder registers it first, his head jerking back in surprise.

It takes Scully a split second longer, her own shock mirrored in Bedelia Du Maurier’s thinner face.

The doctor’s chin tips up, her nostrils slightly flared. “If this is a joke,” she says, “I am not amused.”

Scully fights a rising panic, Mulder’s steady hand at her back. _Eve_ , she thinks wildly. _Samantha._

The implications nearly send her to her knees.


	5. Chapter 5

Perplexistan: OH MY GOD. I…I don’t even know where to begin? The pressure! Just…Mulder and Scully, please. Cornfield. GO.

***

They were on their bellies in rich heartland soil, the paper-bag leaves of the cornstalks scratching their exposed skin. The night was cool, and the damp earth gave off scents of humus and fertilizer.

Scully squinted through a pair of binoculars. “Fox Mulder, you still know how to show a lady a good time,” she murmured.

He wriggled closer, happy, feeling mud through his jeans. “See what I was saying about that truck?”

“Yeah, there’s a bunch of them.” She whistled softly. “When I was a kid, my dad took me to the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst and Hangar One was so massive it made me dizzy. That building must be close to the same size.”

He shifted onto his left elbow, sliding his right hand under her shirt. “I love it when you talk aircraft. Tell me more.”

“You are not getting lucky in this or any other cornfield, Mulder.”

“They’re growing wheat about two miles back.”

She grinned, shaking her head as she put the binoculars down. “Six crop circles over the past month, the land is seized via eminent domain, and this monstrosity appears in under a week. What do you think?”

He ran his knuckles over her jaw, besotted. “I think I want in.”

“Doubtless.”

“But,” he said, his fingers in her hair, “I’m going to kiss you first this time. Just in case.”


	6. Chapter 6

[otherfathers](http://otherfathers.tumblr.com/): Oh my godddd. Can you do one about that post that’s going around where mulder and Scully are on a hammock for whatever reason and Scully is asleep and mulder is just trying to not move bc how cute is ThaT

[gladlybeyondanyxperience](http://gladlybeyondanyxperience.tumblr.com): Mulder, Scully and a hammock. :)

*** 

It smells of honeysuckle and fertile earth, the air heavy with the promise of a humid morning to follow. Fireflies blink their Morse code to one another, bright as nascent stars. Scully had insisted on a bat box and the residents are heading out for the evening, clearing the yard of mosquitoes.

She is asleep in the weather-beaten hammock, his left arm crooked below her neck. A worn copy of _Bel Canto_ is tented on her chest, rising and falling with the steady tide of her lungs.

Mulder watches her, a bright spot in the gloaming. Shadows love the planes of her cheeks and nose, the sweep of her full breasts, the ridges of her hips. They insinuate themselves into the curves of her body as he has.

He studies her face, lovelier than it was at twenty-eight. He makes constellations of her nutmeg freckles, reads the road map of fine lines between them. Her lips are slightly parted, a few escaped strands of hair caught in peppermint chapstick. He wants to lean over and kiss her, but doesn’t wish her to wake. Gently, he tugs the hair away. Scully sighs and tucks her head against his chest.

Mulder fights sleep as long as he can, but eventually drifts off, peaceful beneath the vaulted arch of the Milky Way.


	7. Chapter 7

xtraordinarything: I’ve always been intrigued by Mulder’s expression in “Empedocles” (I think that was the episode) when Scully says “And neither are we” in response to his comment that she and Monica Reyes are “nothing at all alike.”

***

Mulder regards her with mild surprise. They take a different view of things, but nothing alike? Even now? Certainly they are more alike than she and this Agent Reyes, this flaky little new-ager who couldn’t hope to plumb the depths of Scully.

He finds himself offended that she would even compare them, some sibylline newcomer who probably lit a lot of incense in college and still enjoys the odd séance. Her silly talk of evil in death, predicated on the assumption that everyone sees God in a rose.

He usually sees aphids.

Mulder thinks of the life he felt beneath Scully’s taut skin, remembers Doggett must have placed his hand just the same way on a woman’s belly.

He wills himself to be kind.


	8. Chapter 8

For newo-fic-foto: Hannibal; H/B; their first night in Florence.

***

Bedelia leaning against the harpsichord, an art deco still life in aubergine satin. Hannibal admires the architectural beauty of her back, the sculptured curls of her hair. He plans a portrait of her as Persephone.

“Florence,” she muses. “The Renaissance began here over half a millennium ago. Is this to be your rebirth as well?”

“As Dottore Fell, you mean?” He pours two glasses of Bolgheri Superiore from the decanter. He passes her one, which she accepts with a gracious tilt of her head.

“That’s only a name. I was wondering whether it might not represent something else to you. Perhaps a chance to…abandon your other passions.”

“For now I am content among the treasures of the Capponi. A lovely new home, a beautiful bride. What else can a man truly hope for?”

Bedelia turns to him, amused. “I have seen you undressed, the last time you were in my home.” She sets her wine glass on the table beside her before unzipping her gown, letting it whisper to the floor. She watches him watch her. “We are on equal footing now, I think.”

Hannibal places her in The Birth of Venus for later perusal. He hands her a cashmere throw from the chaise longue.

She drapes it around her body like a toga. “We understand each other, then.”

“Yes,” he says. “I believe we do.”


	9. Chapter 9

sportsnightnut: Mulder/Scully, breakfast. I don’t know why. I just get all warm and fuzzy and dreamy-eyed when I think about them in the early morning.

***

Scully’s wearing a towel turban and a bathrobe when he comes back, and they’re far too many road trips in for her to be shy about it. She edges past his suitcase and sits on the squeaky bed they shared last night. “Whatcha got?”

Mulder settles next to her. “You won’t like it.”

“I’ll like it. I’m starving.” 

He pulls four individual-sized boxes of cereal from a plastic bag, followed by two half pints of milk and a couple of plastic spoons.

“That’s the continental breakfast?”

“It is in Kroner.” He hands her a box of Froot Loops.

“That’s not fruit.”

“It’s F-R-O-O-T. Practically the same thing.” Mulder opens his Lucky Charms and balances the box on his thigh to pour the milk in. Most of it ends up on his crotch when the box tips over. “Shit,” he remarks.

Scully unwraps her hair and places the towel on his lap. Using the scissors from the sewing kit, she makes a Y incision through the back of a cereal box and the waxy bag within. She peels away the flaps and pours in milk. Wordlessly, she passes it to Mulder.

“Thanks Mom,” he says. “Listen, my room is toast for at least two weeks. Looks like you’re stuck with me. Sorry.”

She watches him jab the spoon into her improvised cereal bowl, the way the light catches the golden hairs in his stubble when he chews. She breathes in the ghost of yesterday’s cologne, the sleepy morning warmth of the t-shirt he slept in. 

“Whatever,” she mutters, admiring the sun on his arms. “I guess I’ll manage.”


	10. Chapter 10

[readmypress](http://readmypress.tumblr.com/): I am obsessed with what the first words/actions were after “never give up on a miracle.”

***

“I have to,” she says, her voice rough. “I can’t keep doing this to myself. To you.”

He cups her jaw in his hands, thumbing away her tears. “You’re not doing anything to me.”

Something shifts in her face, a crease forming between her brows. “Maybe I should be,” she breathes, pressing a finger to his top lip.

He drops his hands. “Scully…?”

She shakes her head. “I mean really, Mulder. At this point, this far in, what are we waiting for?” Her hand is under his shirt now, nails light against his skin.

He steadies himself, closes his eyes for a long beat before meeting hers again. “I don’t think you’re in a place to-“

Scully chuckles, what she thinks they call a mirthless laugh. “I am so. Damn. Tired. Of men telling me what I want and what I need and what I can handle. It’s _me_ Mulder. Do you really think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Mulder’s eyes move over her face, the dried tears on her cheeks, her lips swollen from crying. And it _is_ her, and it’s them and she’s right, she’s a grown woman. His tongue pokes out to taste the spot her finger rested a moment ago.

She senses the change in him and smiles. She leans up to kiss him, the hand under his shirt sliding around his back, the other tight in his hair.

Maybe this is the miracle.


	11. Chapter 11

Lindsayleephotog: A story about a place over seas where they hide out for some time between the truth and IWTB

*** 

He likes Killarney. Aunt Olive asks few questions, her grown children stopping by only occasionally. Scully spends long hours by the lakes, or sitting silently in the back of St. Mary’s Cathedral. He’d followed her in once, when she went to light candles, and felt like he was reading her diary.

“We can get a quaint stone cottage,” he remarks one night. They are stretched out on a hill, looking at unfamiliar stars. The moon is full and bright. “We’ll be Róisín and Seamus. I could take up shepherding,”

“And what will I be doing, Seamus?”

“You can open a pub.” Mulder can do a fair brogue now. “The lads’ll love ye, Róisín.”

Her rare, wonderful laugh. “You sound like an Irish Spring commercial.”

He props himself on an elbow to gaze down at her. “ _I_ love ye, Róisín.”

Scully laces her fingers through his. “I know you do.”

“I wanted to build a life with you. With William,” he says in a broken version of his regular voice. “I’m sorry, Scully. I thought I could make you a home.”

“I know that too,” she murmurs. She sits up across from him, her eyes full of hope and heartbreak. “But this is what we have and this is where we are.”

“So why did you come with me?”

She takes his larger hand between her two small ones, pressing it between her palms. “Because,” she says, her words raw, “because wherever you are _is_ my home.”


	12. Chapter 12

For [perplexistan](http://tmblr.co/m9Ug_KBS5dMUT2NmCW9W6yQ)‘s anon: Can you request the amazing Aloysia Virgata to write the fic in which Scully asks Mulder for help with IVF??????? I NEED THAT SCENE and I KNOW SHE WILL DO IT JUSTICE. Please!!!!

***

This is far longer than a drabble, but I am including it as part of this prompt series, so all the titles are staying sequential. Also, this is TERRIFYING TO POST. I am flinching, no lie. Please be gentle.

***

“Mulder, what I’m going to say, what I have to ask you…this is difficult for me. So please just…just let me get through it.” Her hands feel conspicuous, and she twists a rubber band.

Mulder’s on the couch, edgy, his worried expression sucking at her courage.

But she’s practiced in front of the mirror, in the shower, in the car. She’s unshakable. “As I said to you, I always thought that I would have a family of my own. And…um…my life…didn’t necessarily work out as I had expected. And I have…I am…in a place where, I believe, it is the right time for me to explore the idea of becoming a parent on my own.” Scully hears herself talking faster than she planned, sees that she snapped the rubber band. 

He’s chewing his lip, hands clasped as he leans forward on his knees.

Scully tucks her hair behind her ears, aware that she is fidgeting, but the urge is desperate. “I have, my doctor and I, we found an egg donor. But obviously there has to be a sperm donor as well and he asked if, he said if I preferred-“ she falters here. It is essential to get this right.

She sits down in the chair across from him, their eyes level now. “Mulder, I am asking if you will be the sperm donor for this baby.” Scully wishes she had it in her to take his hands in hers, but she can’t, not when his eyes are so wide and her fingers have gone numb. “It’s not going to be my biological child. So it would mean a tremendous amount to me to have it share a connection to someone for whom I care so deeply, someone who means the wor-” she swallows, unable to continue. She blinks hard against her tears.

“Scully,” his says, something like reverence in his voice. “I am so-“

“No,” she says, rising. “Please, not now. Just take time to really think about what I’m asking.” She strides past him to the door, letting herself out.

In the hallway she feels a rush of joy, imagining a part of him to nurture, to make up for all he’s endured.


	13. Chapter 13

sixhours: Ooooh. What happened between Sein und Zeit and Closure?

***

Scully slumps against the wall, the bricks rough through her scrubs. Two dozen bodies, some merely skeletons, others still with semi-recognizable features, clad in the rotted fashions of their time. She’s been bumming cigarettes all day because she can’t drink. Takes a long drag now, exhales, and calls Mulder.

“Still watching?”

“There’s just so much footage,” he mumbles.

Scully hears the weariness in his voice, the ache of a lost boy, and wishes she had something to give him. She couldn’t produce a needle mark on his mother, no petechiae in her sunken eyes. She’d hoped for a little girl with a healed collarbone in the charnel house, but there was nothing for the dead there to offer either.

“It’s going to take a long time to identify them,” she says, coughing grave dust out with the smoke. “But I’m prioritizing as best I can.”

“Thanks,” he says. “This can’t be easy for you.”

“When do I ever choose easy?”

He laughs a little. “I’m grateful for that on a daily basis.”

Her smile is sad and fond. “We’re going to get them all home, Mulder. We are.”

He holds the line for a while and she listens to him breathe, praying for the balm to heal his broken heart.


	14. Chapter 14

[readmypress](http://readmypress.tumblr.com/): Scully-initiated sex at the unremarkable house somewhere other than the bedroom :) Anything that would require an adult content warning on AO3.

***

They watch from the porch settee, trees whipping as the rain slashes down. Scully feels alive in the electricity, galvanized. She kisses him in a flash of lightning, jaw rough beneath her palm. His hands slip under her shirt, spanning her back, and she climbs onto his lap.

“Aren’t you friendly this evening?”

“Remember that storm in Pittsfield?” she breathes. “First time on a case.”

“Mmmm…” he says, fingers on her left nipple. “Blame that on the environmental wash of teenaged hormones.”

“I was a Betty.” She wriggles out of her pajama bottoms.

“Still are,” he mumbles into her hair, helping her tug his pants off.

 _He still looks damned good at fifty_ , she thinks, biting her cheek as he eases inside of her. His hands are warm on her breasts, her waist.

She rolls her hips, hearing him sigh between the thunderclaps. Scully tongues the salty skin at the base of his neck. He grips her thighs, thrusting harder when she nips his throat. The wind shifts, pelting them with rain.

Their bodies are slick, her world narrowed to the solid weight of him beneath and inside of her. She tugs at his hair, thumbs brushing his earlobes. Mulder has his mouth at her breast. She can’t remember all the excuses they made, the tension between them a palpable ache for so long. She recalls the exhilarated awkwardness of their first night in his apartment.

They’ve made careful study in the years since. Mulder’s pace has become insistent, his thumb on her clitoris lighting a fuse at the base of her spine. She holds his biceps for leverage as her head falls back.

Scully thinks he calls her name, but it is swallowed up by the storm.


	15. Chapter 15

Sherilynnfenn: <3 can you write one with modern day Mulder + Scully + selfie?

***

Muggy in Baltimore, the air pungent with exhaust and algae. They sit on a bench by the harbor, tossing popcorn to the pigeons and squirrels.

“I’ve autopsied six bodies that came out of that water,” Scully remarks.

“Oh, the memories of Charm City,” Mulder says. “We have an hour to kill before Rush Limbaugh Jr. gets here. You hungry?”

“No, thanks.”

“Aquarium? Science Center? Medical Examiner?”

She grins. “I’m fine here, really.”

Mulder scans the horizon. To his left a flotilla of paddle boats shaped like sea monsters. He grabs Scully’s hand, pulling her to her feet. “That’s what we’re doing,” he tells her, pointing.

Her mouth is an O of surprise. “Mulder, no. I changed my mind. I’m hungry.”

“Liar,” he says cheerfully, and tugs her down the steps to the pier.

She scowls as he pays the man, requesting a green sea monster “for authenticity.”

The boat rocks as they climb aboard, Scully’s expression mutinous. Mulder, clearly pleased with himself, puts his arm around her shoulders. He pulls his phone out, fiddling with it to get the camera up.

“Say cheese, Starbuck,” he says, and pokes her in the ribs to make her laugh.

***

Later, looking at the picture, she smiles. They’re both squinting in the bright sunshine, hair ruffled by a slight breeze. Just her and Mulder and a sea monster, venturing forth into the waves.


	16. Chapter 16

For Dating Prompt Anon: You're amazing! If you're still taking requests, I'll like to request one on Mulder and Scully trying to go on a normal date at the beginning of their sexual relationship. In dire need of some happiness.

 ***

Mulder props his chin in his palms, elbows on the table. “So, Dana,” he purrs, her drink stirrer between his teeth. “Tell me about your job. The FBI, that sounds fascinating.”

“Well, my partner’s a real piece of work.” She loads a tortilla chip with guacamole.

“It feels strange,” he confesses, rolling his beer bottle between his palms. “I mean, figuring out where we’re jumping in here.”

She chews thoughtfully. “Is it really jumping in, though? It seems more like a bend in the river.”

“Nice to be absolved of the getting-to-know-you stage, isn’t it?”

Scully laughs. “There comes a point, Mulder, somewhere between ice worms and mothmen, when people acquire a certain intimacy.”

“ _Between Ice Worms and Mothmen_ will be the title of my guide to workplace romance.” He grins, but she sees something shy in his eyes.

The waiter comes by, noting the empty bottle. “Anything else to drink, sir?”

“Yeah,” Scully says, her hand on Mulder’s. “He’ll have an iced tea.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

[thexfiles](http://tmblr.co/mzzV-B5zhMt3mAfu8yfHW6A): Sein Und Zeit embrace 

***

She half-carries him to the couch, his tears damp on her shirt. She sits on one end, Mulder’s head in her lap. He’s curled in a fetal position, the way he’d spent months in the body she’d opened this morning. Mulder’s got eleven inches on her, and has never looked so small. 

Scully traces his profile with her forefinger. She smooths his hair, her thumb at his cheekbone. She studies the way his top lip fits perfectly into the groove of the lower, his coltishly long lashes. The last of a species, she thinks, wanting to rail at the unfairness of it all.

“Why don’t I get you something to eat?”

He reaches up and untucks her shirt, undoing the buttons. There are only four.

“Mulder?”

He says nothing, but presses his face to her belly, to the cicatrix there. His breath is hot on her bare skin, his arms heavy around her waist.

She thinks of infants in the NICU, the research on skin to skin contact. Eventually his breathing slows. Scully strokes his face until she too drifts off, head lolled back on the couch.

He sleeps fitfully, and the night is long and sad and terrible. Scully feels prismatic, as though her intimacy with death lets her radiate his grief into a spectrum of visible emotions.

One of them, she knows, is love.


	18. Chapter 18

For [newo-fic-foto](http://tmblr.co/mXu0quyGmBAYRLC5pgE7sYw):  a missing scene from Tithonus (post hospital scene)  

For [dashakay](http://tmblr.co/mgqZ6j9PZbkyp1pkA5-NL-g) who (jokingly) prompted me with this quote of Gillian’s: “I’ll be on crutches. He’ll be in a wheelchair. But, yeah, it would be fun.“

***

Her wound emits a pulsing ache like a second heartbeat, but the bullet missed all the places that would have spelled death for her and Peyton Ritter both. Scully had seen Ritter in the hall yesterday, her partner’s hackles up, and felt a cheap paperback thrill at watching Mulder stare the man down.  

She remembers the cold. The fear. She tried to call out to her father, but she could manage nothing more than a gurgle of blood. She’d closed her eyes to the pale horse, just as Fellig had told her to. And he had died while she had lived. She’d told Mulder the story last night over a game of Boggle, the Lovecraftian tale of Fellig’s nurse.

“So do I live forever now?” She smiled when she asked, but she was also thinking of Bruckman.

“You gave Fellig a gift, Scully. You weren’t stealing. Sorry, you’re as mortal as the rest of us.”

“Bummer,” she joked, unaccountably relieved.

“It’ll be great. Chasing aliens in my wheelchair and you hobbling on crutches telling me I’m crazy.”

She reached over to squeeze his hand, poking his thumb with hers. “Forever wouldn’t be any fun without you, Mulder.”


	19. Chapter 19

Alien Onesie Anon: AHHH I just saw a pic of William in a space/alien-themed onesie and died inside. I immediately thought, WHO WOULD BE ABLE TO FILL THIS HOLE IN MY HEART and only one name came to mind: Mrs. Aloysia Virgata. Can you please please please please please write a fic where Mulder and Scully go shopping for baby stuff?????? PLEASE. I NEED THIS LIKE I NEED AIR.

***

Mulder was awed by the sheer scope of products designed to cater to a person the size of a cat. “I realize this was my idea,” he said, inspecting a breast pump, “but I confess to feeling daunted.”

Scully sighed. “I’ve taken care of the big items already, but it’s the day-to-day stuff that’s overwhelming. There must be at least 15 different types of pacifiers.” 

Mulder scrutinized the selection. “None of these nipples could pass for yours. Let’s go home and make a mold.”

She swatted him lightly on the cheek. 

“Idiots have babies every day,” he observed. “This can’t be that hard. Look, Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. I like it. Straightforward.” He dumped a half-dozen tubes into the cart. Mulder strode purposefully through the aisles, tossing in any object that struck his fancy while Scully watched in amusement.

“Clothes,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I want this kid to make all the other babies jealous.” He draped a tiny Beatles t-shirt over Scully’s belly. 

She grinned. “Perfect fit.”

“This is weird, Scully,” he confessed. “I mean it’s good. But it’s weird.”

She placed a star-printed hat above the shirt. “It’s very weird.”

“Weird’s our specialty, though.” He slid his hand under her sweater, her skin hot and taut over the solid weight of their child.


	20. Chapter 20

For Tiny Asian Country Anon: I was on a swing when I got from work today and I was wondering if there’s a fanfic where Scully is on a swing waiting for Mulder or the other way. I don’t remember reading one like this and it would be a great pleasure if you write one. It would be nice if it’s summer and they’re eating ice cream, any flavor you like.

***

Ghostbusting in New Oxford, Pennsylvania. They’re lodged in a quaint bed and breakfast, because those are the only lodgings the town has to offer. Mulder is suffering from an overdose of doilies and cabbage roses. The heavy air makes his collar limp.

Scully went to the coffee shop on the next block, but she’s been gone for some time. He walks down the sidewalk, passing a couple of antique shops with sagging porches. When he gets to the coffee shop, a greyhound thumps her tail at the threshold, drowsy in the heat.

“Lookin’ for yer partner?” calls the elderly man inside.

“Do you know where she went?”

“Out back.”

Mulder follows the path of garden stones behind the building. Scully sits on a wooden swing suspended from an ancient chestnut. She is eating something from a paper bowl.

“Ditching me for some fun in the sun?”

“The proprietor offered me some of their homemade ice cream.” She licks the spoon. “I demurred until he told me they have a sundae with their own peaches.”

Mulder glances at the tree, heavy with velvet fruit. “You gonna share, or what?”

“Mmmmm, I don’t know. It’s pretty good.” He crouches down until he’s at eye level with her.

“I suffered through your dreamsicles and bee pollen, Scully. You owe me.”

She eats a slice of peach, watching him.

He kisses her in the shade of the great tree, tasting all the sweetness of summer.


	21. Chapter 21

For the anon whose prompt distracted me during kickboxing: When you have time, can you write something about Mulder and Scully being married to other people, but they meet up again for the first time in years and spend one night together, and then have to part ways for an indeterminate amount of time? Thank you fanfic goddess!

***

She’d quit after the Patterson case, heading to San Diego to practice medicine. Half a decade, but he’d know her profile anywhere. The years had been very good to her, all sculpted cheekbones and glossy hair. Decidedly patrician tilt to her chin.

“Case,” he said to her unspoken question.

She hoisted her briefcase. “Conference.”

They stood at Grand Army Plaza, the universe orbiting their hot gravity, the air between them still electric and charged. Mulder’s mouth buzzed like it did when the Novocain wore off. 

Scully (she’d always be Scully) licked her lips, a habit which used to drive him to distraction and misery. “I’m at the Pennsylvania on 7th,” she said. “It’d be a shame not to catch up.”

He remembered stakeouts, bad Chinese food, her breath warm in his ear, the goofy wonder of her infrequent giggle. He remembered her silent tears when she resigned, the few long-distance phone calls that dwindled into nothing.

He startled when she pressed a plastic key card into his hand. Her eyes were half-lidded when he met them, a smile tugging at her mouth. 

“I’m married,” he breathed, which was still technically true. She wore the same light perfume, and he wanted to press his face to her neck.

Scully arched the eyebrow that had punctuated every slideshow he’d made her. “So am I.” She gave his tie a pull before crossing the park.


	22. Chapter 22

For self-immolating anon:  I love everything you have ever written and if you manage to make my prompt happen I am probably going to catch fire and die. A ficlet/drabble where the shoe on the IWTB poster in the first teaser is William’s.

***

An unkempt boy in mud-stained clothes. He wears an olive drab jacket, loose on his gangly frame. Chestnut hair hangs in his eyes, his outsized feet on Mulder’s poster. Scully knows, and the knowledge burns.

“William,” she breathes, her chest tight.

The boy looks away. “I think I used to be.”

Scully swallows, afraid she will shatter if she touches him. “How is this possible?” 

He still won’t meet her eyes, his toe scuffing the floor. “I’ve always known I was adopted. But I…I started to remember things. From when I was a baby.”

_Do you remember how I loved you? How I brushed your perfect toes across my face? Do you remember the sound of my heart breaking?_

“Your parents…?

“They didn’t believe me.” He watches her now, defiant, daring her to challenge him too. “I ran away.” 

“We have to ca-”

Tears pool in his blue eyes. “Please,” he says. “I just want the truth.”

The echo of his father is what finally undoes her.


	23. Chapter 23

For h0ldthiscat: if your inbox isn’t already inundated, I’d love something featuring a mixtape. 

***

Mulder rummages through her drawers without any clear sense of what he’s looking for. Socks and underwear, she’ll need those. Do women wear bras in the hospital? He tosses a few in to be safe. Scully doesn’t have much loungewear. He would like to see her in something other than a hospital gown, something of her own.

He looks for a book with dog-eared corners, a sweatshirt with frayed cuffs, something to keep her bright while the sun can’t touch her.He’s terrified she’ll fade into the background.

In her night table, a picture of her with her sister. Round-faced beauties with masses of teased hair and blue eyeshadow. Their lips are frosted pink, looking sticky-sweet as bubble gum. A Christmas card from her father that he doesn’t read.

He sees a cassette case, his own scribbled handwriting on the notes. Scully borrowed it for her Walkman in Bellefleur, and he recalls now he’d never gotten it back. Leonard Cohen, some Tom Petty. Warren Zevon. She’d put it with her small treasures, the little thief.

He pops it into her stereo, sprawling on the bed to listen. Mulder closes his eyes, thinks of them both so young and green in Oregon. Scully’s freckled nose, her ponytail like a flag. Pink Floyd seeps into his ears and Mulder runs endlessly in the dark, in the clawing woods, afraid he will not find her in time.


	24. Chapter 24

For [xfiles-behind-the-scenes](http://tmblr.co/mgSi0cGzAmQpRqm8P0Ot57w):  I have a prompt: Set during the revival, Mulder and Scully in a car on a stakeout together :) 

***

“Lycanthropy,” she says, her elbows on the steering wheel. “I’m downright nostalgic.”

“It’s a timeless pursuit.”  

“No,” she corrects. “Werewolf myths are scarce prior to the fourteenth century. The earliest European mention is likely from the early thirteenth, in  _Bisclavret._ ”

He grins, endlessly enchanted. “Fess up. You had Siri check that out on the ride over.”

Scully sniffs. “Mulder, I gave some of the best years of my life to cryptozoology.”

He reaches over to massage her neck, bumping the gearshift. “Stakeouts again, Scully. Who’d a-thunk?”

“Oh, I suspect it’s been a long-held fantasy of yours. Mmmm, a little to the left?”

He adjusts, eliciting a contented sigh. “If I get to start living out all my long-held fantasies, this one ends in the backseat where you tell me how big my gun is.”

“Poor Mulder, so predictable. Can you reach that cooler bag? It has dinner in it.”

He opens it and withdraws several Tupperware containers. “Leftover lasagna? Excellent. Is there any of that garlic bread I made?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No. I put it in the freezer in case of vampires.”

Mulder opens up the string beans. “Oh, you want to repel vampires now? That’s a change from days of yore.

“Well,” she says, in a conspiratorial tone, “no one ever bit my neck like you do.”


	25. Chapter 25

[scullyinblack](http://tmblr.co/md96pP1YNwHM_OSD-KGVmbw): I’m in love with your writing. I wonder if you could write a post En Ami (master) piece where somehow Mulder finds out about Scully’s wearing that black dress to have dinner with CSM?

***

It was only fair to show her the picture that arrived, black and white overhead of her in a dark clinging gown. The graininess left her a stark beauty made of bone and shadow.  He pushed it across the desk when she came in.

“That’s quite a dress, Scully.” Which was a masterful understatement. Her cleavage was shockingly deep to him, her bare back like a violin.

“It wasn’t my choice.”

His hackles were instantly up. “What do you mean?”

“He picked it. Something I couldn’t wear a wire with.” She coughed, uncomfortable.

No bra. Mulder felt something crawl over his skin.

She held the picture between her thumb and forefinger, distaste in her eyes. “He undressed me once while I was sleeping. To change my clothes.”

White noise in his ears as he shoved the chair back, crossing the office in three strides. Scully’s hand on his wrist while he swore and made gruesome promises.

“Mulder, stop. What he did was a gross violation. But I don’t need you defending my honor like some medieval squire.”

The truth of it stilled him, the strength of her quiet dignity. “I know. But I hate that it happened.” His jaw was clenched.

“I hate it too.” She lay her head on his chest.

He held her close, encircled like a city on a hill.


	26. Chapter 26

I would love it if you’d write about Mulder getting a little jealous over a guy coming onto Scully, but he’s trying to be casual about it. Preferable taking place before they get together.

***

Mulder finishes his interview with the waitress and turns. Some guy at the bar is trying to pick Scully up while she responds with the cold stare that is, unfortunately for her, arousing.

Probably.

To some people.

Not that guy, not now, but eventually he’ll have to share her. It’s distasteful to imagine a third party in their dark and clandestine bubble. Someone else in her apartment at 2 AM when his best ideas happen, someone else eating half her egg roll and arguing against pineapple pizza.

A surgeon. A dentist. A guy for babies and Frisbees, for Christmas at Bill’s and July Fourth cookouts. Polo shirts and loafers.

He saunters over, taps her arm with his notepad. “Contact never showed, I guess?”

“Oh, hey, I didn’t know she was here with someone. Sorry, buddy.”

Scully’s eyes narrow. “You’re apologizing to  _him_  because you think I’m his _property_?”

“Whoa, hey, calm down babe.” A nod to Mulder. “Feisty little redhead you have there. True what they say?”

She slaps her badge on the counter.

Mulder waves bye-bye with the tips of his fingers when the man backs away. “You are kind of feisty though.”

“He asked if I wanted a glass of red to go with my hair.”

Mulder guffaws as though he can’t imagine a version of himself cockily asking her the same thing. “What an idiot.”

Scully shrugs, jaded.

He leans forward, batting his lashes. “My name is Fox, but you can call me tonight.”

“I’d rather call you a cab.”

He wonders how much longer he can go without kissing her.


	27. Chapter 27

For Bathtub Anon: I loved your story [Tevilah](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4342721)! How about some more of them hanging out at her Nightmare Tub?

***

The water is atramentous by candlelight, air sultry and almond-sweet. Bedelia catches glimpses in the mirror and likes what she sees. His body exquisitely muscled, her head tucked against his neck. Hannibal lets the sponge trail down her breasts, disappearing below the surface. She chews her cheek, tasting blood.

“Sanza mia donna non vi voria gire, quella c’ca blonda testa e claro viso,” he murmurs, her earlobe against his lips. 

Bedelia smiles, her Italian not so good as his, but she recognizes da Lentini. “Oh, are you going somewhere?”

“I certainly hope not.” He abandons the sponge to lace his fingers through hers, drawing her left hand to his mouth.

Exhilarated, Bedelia watches him take her ring finger between her teeth. His tongue is warm and probing, triggering a low hum in her sacral spine. She shivers when he does not bite.

He lifts his glass of Sassicaia from the table, and Bedelia gasps when he pours it over her neck. His mouth is on her hyoid bone now, her clavicles. She gazes at his sleek head in the polished glass, at the ruby wine staining her breasts and throat. Her fingers tight in his hair, her diamond catching the light.

Steam rises from the surface of the bath, drifting away from them like ghosts.


	28. Chapter 28

bedannibal-lectaurier:  I’d love anything about Bedelia and Hannibal’s pre-canon relationship. First meeting, first therapy session, whenever that moment was when they saw a kindred spirit in the other.

***

“It is as though it consumed me when it happened. And I, in turn, consumed it. Mischa’s loss became a part of me.”

Her eyes narrow, just a fraction, and he sees her store his remark away for later consideration. “It can be extremely difficult to reconcile the loss of an innocent.”

“In some ways it is easier. There is nothing to understand, is there? There is no universal scale to balance, no wondering what the person may have done to incur such violence. These things simply  _are._ ”

Bedelia makes a note on her pad, and Hannibal admires the elegant machinery of her hands. When he meets her gaze, she holds it.

“The law of the jungle comforts you?”

“I can appreciate the symmetry of it. The strong devour the weak.”

“Were you angry at Mischa? That she was…weak, in a sense?” Such frank curiosity in her Delft eyes.

He allows himself the uninterrupted pleasure of watching her. It is her stillness that captivates him most, the way she does not fidget. It’s not the stillness of a deer or rabbit that she has, but the contained waiting of a predator. A golden, feline quality.

“Evolution predisposes us to a certain contempt for weakness,” he observes at last.

Her lips part ever so slightly, a thinning of her irises as the pupils dilate.

 “Hannibal,” she says, rising. “Let me get you a glass of wine.”


	29. Chapter 29

Dating Anon: This will probably destroy me, but can you write something about Scully dating during the revival?

***

She goes on a couple of dates, just to see if she’s even still capable. Just kicking the tires. A drug sales rep, a lawyer from the coffee shop. A radiologist from work who takes her to a piano bar. They’re both too shy to sing, so they eat Mexican food and swap stories.

“I heard you worked for the FBI,” he says. “That must have been pretty crazy.”

Scully picks at the remains of her fish tacos, faking a laugh. “Crazy’s a good word for it,” she admits.

He asks what civilians always ask, the vulgar question that has the potential for such deliciously cheap thrills. “Ever have to shoot anybody?

“Thankfully not,” she lies, feeling distaste.

He’s quite handsome, widowed by a car accident two years ago. Three motherless children smile from frames in his office. Great doctor, by all accounts. Their drinks arrive and he scoots closer.  His breath is warm on her neck when he says, “I’m glad you came out tonight, Dana.”

Scully can smell his cologne when he rests his hand between her shoulder blades. Loneliness breaks over her like a wave.


	30. Chapter 30

For Separation Anon: I LOVED The Oak and the Cypress. I want more in this universe! (I mean, actually I don’t, but if it has to happen, I want you to do it.)

***

The worst part is how easily he adapts to her absence. She was right, he’s gone all the time anyway. He tucks the ache of missing her deep inside with his other sorrows. He calls her a few times, giving her highlights.

“Stopped at that little diner we liked by Lake Erie,” he says. “And I saw the Largest Tinfoil Ball in the Midwest. Thought of you.” He scuffs his shoe against the side of an abandoned fertility clinic near Akron.

“Did you make a hat out of it?”

“Nah, this was the cheap stuff. You need heavy duty to keep out the space rays.”

“Be safe out there, Mulder.”

He’s quiet for a long time, just holding on to this connection they have through cell towers and satellites. He hangs up, finally, before he says anything he might mean.


	31. Chapter 31

[maybeireallycanthandlethetruth](http://tmblr.co/mHbfWrdOm3JPq6fMxoEUjNg): Love your work! I could really get on board with some cerebral pillow talk. M/S or H/B or both for the purposes of scientific comparison. 

***

“How did you know?”

Bedelia, draped in Egyptian cotton, traces his lips with her finger. “Because you loved her too much to give her to the worms, Hannibal. Funerary cannibalism is established in numerous cultures.”

“I honored her.”

“You cultivated a taste for forbidden fruit.”

“Isn’t that what you are doing, Dr. du Maurier?” His mouth bleeds heat along her collarbone, making her sigh.

“My tastes are already quite cultivated.”

Hannibal laughs softly, his hand at her breast. “So I needn’t sketch you as Persephone, then?”

She strokes his hair, musing. “Why would Hades would want to rule if his kingdom were completely devoid of beauty? I suspect it had its own dark charms.”

“But pomegranate seeds make such a good defense, don’t they Bedelia?”

She swallows, his teeth grazing her jugular like a whetstone.


	32. Chapter 32

For zombie anon: Post-Hollywood AD fic. Mulder and Scully take the bureau credit card out on the town. They “eat, drink, dance, and make love.” (A zombie’s true motive, according to Mulder) Bless Duchovny for the themes in his writing. ;)

***

The car is parked at the Mulholland overlook, leftovers from Lucques in the back seat. The top is down and a classic rock station floats into the night.

“I realize it’s cliché,” Mulder says, sitting on the hood. “But this really is a hell of a view.”

Scully leans against the car, tipsy on wine and circumstance. “I’ve seen this in so many movies it feels like we’re on another soundstage.”

He loves the contrast of her black dress and white arms, creamy and cool next to the suntanned California girls. He holds out his hand.

She takes it, stumbling a bit when she walks over. That laugh again, her chuckly giggle that warms the pit of his belly. Her thighs brush his knees when she settles between them, and Mulder finds his arms loose around her hips. They sway to Lynyrd Skynyrd like middle schoolers.

Her eyes are serious, her lower lip between her teeth when she undoes his bowtie. She cups his jaw in her hands, her thumbs light at his ears, and Mulder feels a buzzing in the back of his throat.

Scully’s lips are warm against his in the cool night air. Mulder grips her dress when her tongue slips into his mouth, his other hand crushing her hair. Her heels thump against the hood when he pulls her down on top of him.


	33. Chapter 33

For Morning-after Anon: Hey you, you awesome writer person you! Are you still taking prompts? How about a morning meeting with Skinner the day after Mulder and Scully had sex for the first time?

***

She had known there was a meeting this morning, she’d had it on the calendar for weeks so why last night of all nights had she leaned over and-

“Agent Scully?”

“Sir?” The back of her neck is clammy and she notices her hand aches from gripping the pen too hard.

“I asked whether you agreed with Agent Mulder on this.”

Mulder looks obnoxiously loose-limbed, more coltish than ever with his long lashes curled on his cheek. Eyes like the Atlantic peek through them, she remembers the way they looked last night when he-

“SCULLY.”

“ _Yes_.”

“Yes it was a poltergeist, Scully?” Skinner’s voice is testy, he’s leaning across the table now.

“What, I…no. I obviously don’t think it was a poltergeist.”

Mulder chuckles, then hides it with a cough. “Of course she doesn’t, sir.”

Skinner eyes him, brown furrowed. Slowly he turns his head to Scully, who doesn’t dare break eye contact. “No, of course she doesn’t,” he says, the words carefully measured and cut. “That’ll be all.”

They leave the table without looking back. Once in the elevator, Mulder jams his hands in his pockets and grins. 

Scully presses her burning face to the cool of the button panel. “Oh god,” she groans. “He knows.”

Mulder doesn’t add insult to injury by agreeing. “Cheer up, Scully,” he says. “I found your bra behind the aquarium.”


	34. Chapter 34

Prompt: Mulder's last coherent thought as he leans in to kisse Scully. The first time? Yesterday?

***

First:

Another near miss, another hospital with his fierce little partner. But zombie bites, prophecy, and the zeitgeist of Judeo-Christian pessimism left the night feeling penultimate. Scully gazed at the television with clear-eyed fascination, though she more than anyone knew time was a human construct. The ball slipped down, marked off another trip around the sun, and Auld Lang Syne blared forth. Couples in Times Square cheered, kissing, and he pondered the mechanics of mimicking them in spite of his bad arm. Scully turned, her face canted to him, and he pondered no more.

Last:

He lay in the car on the fringes of consciousness. There was a dim awareness of pain but it was a thing separate from him now. Scully was half crying as she slid a pillow under his head, her little dog tucked behind his knees. 

“We can find him,” she mumbled. “We can fix this.”

He didn’t know who she needed or why, and his vision was slipping out of focus again. But if a man was missing, Scully would find him. He knew that much still. Her fingers were soft against his scalp and her mouth against his was the last thing that happened before darkness fell like a curtain.


	35. Chapter 35

Prompt: 155 words, breast

***

She was curled on the couch, wrapped in a silken robe the color of her eyes. Her hair was swept back, her freckles cinnamon constellations. At her breast was his son, full rosy lips flared like a koi. The baby’s tiny hand batted at her blue-veined skin, at the creamy flesh against which Mulder’s own mouth had spent so much time.

Her breasts were lush with milk and Mulder wondered if it was wrong, Oedipal, to want to draw one of her darkened nipples between his teeth. 

The baby, unconcerned by such matters, continued to nurse. At length, Scully switched him to her other breast, groaning as he latched on.

Mulder looked at her with reverence then, awed by the strength of her slim body.

“I love you,” he breathed. He kissed the velvety head of his firstborn at the fontanel, then the arced cheek of the woman who had given life to them both.


	36. Chapter 36

Prompt: What do you imagine Mulder and Scully's pillow talk to have been like early on in their relationship?

***

He asked her questions about her family, her favorite Christmas present, her fights with her siblings. Scully wanted to know about his family too, but didn’t press. Instead she asked him about English pubs, about her Meyers Briggs type. The first home run he ever hit.

But Mulder wanted to listen to her rather than talk. And she, enraptured, spoke until he gradually did as well.

They both had guinea pigs. Scully’s was named Carl and Mulder’s was named Spock. Scully’s first kiss was in 8th grade, Mulder’s in 6th. She was always the new kid and he was always the weird kid. Sports helped him get by with relative ease, but she was skinny and redheaded and knew what a Fibonacci sequence was.

The Scullys had too many children and the Mulders were short one. One family fought in the other’s wars.

She’d stroke his back and whisper nonsense. The periodic table, the cranial nerves, “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” And the slurring of her S, the way she said “ruhm,” would settle him to sleepy kisses.

They lay in the night, in the nude, and transcended the sins of their fathers.


	37. Chapter 37

Prompt: 155 words, primed

***

The drawer opens, releasing the sour scent of musty paper. She is part of this now, the secret world that roils beneath.

Mulder slips in, says _hey_ like his voice might frighten her.

Scully wishes she could talk to him about Nurse Owens. Mulder has names for such stuff, knows the history and weight of the ephemeral. 

She smiles instead, a ghostly thing. “Good to be here.”

He goes to his chair, spinning it without sitting down. “You sure you’re ready?”

Scully looks up at him from her crouched position, wondering why people keep asking her that. What do they want from her instead? Isolation and melancholy? 

“You don’t think I can judge?” she asks, a touch acerbic.

Mulder blinks, nods. “Welcome home, then,” he tells her.

Scully pushes the file cabinet shut, locks up her ghosts and mysteries with all the others.

She sits across from him, ready for this for the first time.


	38. Chapter 38

Prompt: can I request a fic let where TLG walk in on Monday and Scully having some?

***

They have bags of food from Jimmy’s; Greek salads and meatball subs, cheesesteaks and chicken Parmesan. There’s a box of cannoli and almond macaroons, a pint of Spumoni for the birthday girl.

Byers heads the procession down her hall, an ambassador of good taste. Langley, gawky and squinting, brings up the rear like a paranoid ostrich. Frohike strides between them, carrying the offerings.

Mrs. Scully had, with a sigh, confirmed her daughter planned to spend the evening at home. Messages were left for Mulder and they assumed he would join them, because where else had Mulder to go?

Byers raps  _shave and a haircut_  on the door, waiting for a reply, but there is none. He knocks again, harder, as Scully is oft times known to lose herself in _JAMA_ of an evening. Mulder had once found her conked out over _The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology_ , a highlighter leaving lurid green marks on her pale cheek.

But no matter, Frohike assures them, stepping forth. He brandishes Scully’s keys like a wise dwarf with a long held talisman.

“Sweet,” Langley says, as Frohike unlocks the door. The deadbolt clunks, the doorknob clicks. Gears are turning inside the portal. The door swings open and Scully is not visible, is not curled on her couch with wine and wisdom at her pretty fingertips. 

They peer at one another, unsure.

Inside, then, to her tidy soft rooms that smell of laundry and toiletries. There is no scent of toner, no twinge of burnt wires and solder. Langley sniffs, considering. “Tea tree oil,” he pronounces. “Rosemary.” 

Byers steps forward, taking the bags from Frohike as he does. He sets them on the table, scanning about. Scully’s shoes are on the floor, her keys on the hook. She is home, then. Resting, perhaps. Showering.They’ll wait, it is agreed. Surprise her with this feast.

Frohike, looking put out, looking small and crabby, withdraws his phone. He punches Mulder’s home number in, mistrustful of the FBI issued cell. It rings for a long time, then goes to voicemail. Frohike jams the phone back into his pocket in disgust.

“Scully?” he calls, peering into the kitchen. Silence there. He prowls down the hall, calling her name. He does not wish to startle her emerging Venus-like from the shower, waking rosy from a nap.  


Noises in the bedroom, voices, the rustle of linens and hasty dressing. He understands then, a crooked Grinchy grin showing his teeth.

“Fox,” he murmurs. “You _dog_.”  



	39. Chapter 39

Prompt: Something about when Scully moves back to the house?

***

She slips back home like a half-remembered song. A word here, a few notes there, and then suddenly you can sing the whole thing in the shower without realizing it. Suddenly she’s scrambling eggs in the kitchen, she’s replacing your Head & Shoulders with her frou-frou masques.

One day you realize she needs her underwear drawer back, that there are four kinds of yogurt in the fridge, and that there’s a new rut in the driveway. One day you realize she hasn’t left in a week, a fortnight, a month.

“Scully,” you say to her from the depths of the hammock. She is in an Adirondack chair, reading a book on Ada Lovelace. There are many of her books on the night table beside your bed. You think the “your” could be plural again.

She licks a finger to turn the page. “Hmm?” she replies, not looking up. And this is fine because her profile, then, is yours to admire.

“Nothing,” you say. You don’t ask about her plans. You don’t mention her rent, her almond milk, her bras and stockings festooning the radiator.   


Over the both of you the sun moves steadily westward, marking off another day shared.


	40. Chapter 40

Prompt: I need a fic with Scully's stolen dog Daggoo and her wearing the Knicks shirt

***

The dog sits on her bed, his head cocked to the side in a way that reminds her of Mulder. Scully feeds him morsels of shredded chicken from her fingers, scrunching her toes under the blanket. 

“Tesla,” she says, trying it out.   


The dog wags his tail.

“Good boy, good Tesla.”  


He lays down on his belly, making little woofing sounds as he inches closer. That reminds her of Mulder too.

Scully gives him the last of the chicken, wishes Mulder would hurry back. Her feet are freezing and if she looks sad enough, he’ll grab her the socks she’s too chilly to get up and get.

The dog scoots closer until he’s got his head against her leg, his fur soft against her bare skin. She pulls him into her lap, cuddling him close, and is happy to have something small and warm to wrap her arms around again.

The front door opens and Mulder’s footsteps are heavy in her quiet apartment. Tesla wiggles and barks. 

“Shhh,” she admonishes. “It’s getting late.”  


Mulder follows the barking into the bedroom. “Hey,” he says, walking in. “Dog food’s in the kitchen. Is he still Kepler?”

“I think he’s a Tesla.”  


Mulder sits on the bed, reaching forward to give the dog a scratch behind the ears. “Scully is that…is that my Knicks shirt?”

She blinks. “This is _my_ Knicks shirt, Mulder.”

“Like hell it is.” He reaches around her back, ignoring her as she swats at him. “This is the one I ripped a piece off of for Boggs, Scully. This isn’t just _my_  Knicks shirt. This is my _favorite_  Knicks shirt. I’ve been looking for it!”  


She pulls Tesla closer. “Stop violating the fourth amendment, Agent.”  


“Stop violating the eighth commandment, Doctor.”  


They stare at each other for a moment, smiling, a little breathless. Slowly, Scully tugs the shirt over her head, wads it up to throw at him. “Here, you big baby.”

He lets it fall to the bed, then turns his attention to warming her up.


	41. Chapter 41

Prompt: Mulder's should suggest Daggoo as the dog's name, yeah? Because Guy told Mulder about him and Mulder doesn't know he's THE dog but he IS the do!

***

“Queequeg Two,” he suggests. “Like Snowball Two on _The Simpsons.”_  


Scully wrinkles her nose, rubbing the soft skin of the dog’s ear between her fingers. “You’re not serious, are you?”

Mulder shrugs. “It would be easy to remember.”

“It’s bad luck,” she sniffs, haughty and derisive as if she hadn’t scorned the very idea of luck and fate a hundred times.  


Mulder lets the animal worry his finger between its teeth. “You know my werelizard claims he had his way with you.”

Scully blinks. “Oh? How was I?”

“Enthusiastic, he says. Vocal.”

“Hmmm. You know reptiles have paired hemipenes, which are inverted paired -”  


“Stop.”  


She grins, rubbing the dog’s belly until he emits something approximating a canine purr. Mulder knows how it must feel.

“Dagoo,” he says suddenly.  


“Dagoo?”  


“Yeah, the lizard guy, he had a dog named Dagoo but it ran off. Wasn’t, uh, wasn’t that a character in _Moby-Dick_  too, Scully? One of the harpooners?”  


She sits back on her heels, thoughtful. “Yeah,” she replies softly. “Yeah, he was.”

They look down at the dog.

“Hey, Dagoo,” Scully murmurs, running her finger under his chin..   


Mulder watches her, loving and beloved, not surprised that even a part-time man should wish to claim her.


	42. Chapter 42

Prompt: Accidental MSR boob graze in the early days of canon, Mulder blushes for the first time in front of Scully.

***

Bellefleur at early morning. They went for coffee by the weakest sunlight, by hydrogen languidly converting to helium in the lazy gold of dawn.

Mulder grazed the parabola of her high breast when he reached for the sugar and his cheek glowed as though she had slapped it.


	43. Chapter 43

Prompt: scully moaned Fox one time when they were making love and that is the moment Mulder decided he didnt mind his first name after alll....thank u god bless

***

Her body was the standard against which he measured his focus to the essential. She was his touchstone, his baseline. Her love kept him both sane and desirous of sanity.

He kissed her with his lips and his tongue and his reptile brain. She kept his heart beating, his lungs sucking air.

Mulder felt her hips against his, the tender crush of her breasts against his ribs.

“Fox,” she gasped, and he drank it in with a prepossessing greed.  



	44. Chapter 44

Prompt: Can you write some MSR holiday smut?

***

Her mouth felt bruised even though his kisses had been middle-school sweet. She imagined herself an overripe peach, swollen and bursting, tender beneath his touch. 

The cab ride was torture and only her strict decorum kept her from jumping him in the back of it. He made love to her with his eyes, his hands on the taut lengths of her legs. She was half drunk on love and zombie bites.

They flung money at the smirking cabbie, stumbling through Virginia slush to the Pottery Barn coziness of her apartment. 

“Mulnrfff,” she mumbled into his mouth, her back against her door as he fumbled with the key.  


Scully almost fell when the door opened, staggering back onto the couch. She reached for his belt, her nimble fingers suddenly clumsy.

“You sure?” he asked, gasping and chivalrous.

She almost laughed but she pulled him atop her instead, nearly a hundred pounds on her, and it was the lightest weight she’d ever borne. Scully tugged at her own trousers instead, leaving Mulder to address his clothing. She wanted him more than she imagined she would, even in her recent thigh-trembling fantasies.

Mulder, meanwhile, had worked his fly open and the erection straining at his boxers made her chew the inside of her cheek.  


“Condom?” he mumbled into her mouth, sliding his fingers beneath the waistband of her underwear. He tossed them to the floor and out of her mind.  


“No need,” she breathed, drawing her legs up over his back.  


Mulder tugged his boxers down then, pressing himself against the hot juncture at the center of her body.

“ _Please,”_  Scully hissed, her fingers in his hair, her tongue in his mouth.

Mulder acquiesced, gentleman that he was, and she cried out with half a decade of longing.


	45. Chapter 45

Prompt: S8, Mulder and Doggett chat after Doggett says something like "wtf man, you're not the person I thought you'd be after the way Agent Scully’s been pining for you. You're treating her like shit."

***

Vending machine dinner for him again while Scully sleeps, the hospital hallway a dreary parade of the despondent and unwell. He’s been fielding visitors like a bouncer, letting her mother in, keeping curious acquaintances out. He knows they’re a couple of white collar circus freaks, knocked-up Agent Scully and her zombie partner.

“Agent Mulder,” calls a gruff voice. 

Muldah. Moldah. He doesn’t like the way the man says his name. “Hello Agent Doggett,” Mulder replies, because he was well brought up.

Doggett is carrying a bag of takeout from Scully’s preferred Chinese establishment. “Thought I’d bring her something better than this hospital crap.” His smile is a little tight.

“Thanks, I’ll be sure to give it to her when she wakes up.” Doggett is not on his personal VIP list.  


Doggett chuckles dryly, shaking his head. “You’re a real piece of work, Agent Mulder, you know that?”

“Rumors abound,” he replies, holding his hand out for the bag.  


Doggett passes it to him. “You know, she talked about you all the time. I don’t think she even realized it. But everything we did, every choice she made, it was like she had to consider what you’d think of it.”

This is an uncomfortable revelation, so he chooses to ignore it for the present. “Yeah, well, were partners for a long time. You get into certain habits.” 

“Yeah? Maybe so. Maybe so. But you got a second chance almost nobody does, you know? She got a second chance. And what I see, Agent Mulder, is that you’re not quite the gentleman I expected.”  


Mulder’s laugh is more of a bark. “You want a signed letter of reference from my deportment teacher? I can waltz, I can politely send back a bottle of wine. I can fold a napkin into a swan.”

“That’s swell. That’s really nice. Why don’t you make her one to go with the dinner I dropped off?”  


Mulder is now sufficiently pissed to get to his feet. “What do you want to say to me, Doggett, hmmm? You think Scully wants to be coddled and patted on the head and fed some fucking lo mein? That is not what Scully wants.”

Doggett looks him up and down. “For a man who casts such a long shadow, your shoes weren’t all that big when I had to fill ‘em.” He turns then, walks back down the hall.

Mulder stares after him, fists clenched, and wonders whether he loathes himself or Doggett more.


	46. Chapter 46

Prompt: William stays with S and Mulder and Scully works at Quantico (or maybe FBI) and one day Mulder and William come visit her at work.

***

William is always a bit intimidated by his mother’s office. There are strange smells down there; jars of terrible, fascinating oddities; instruments he loves to touch with his curious fingers. He wants to hold his father’s hand as they descend into the bowels of Quantico, but he feels that fourth graders are beyond that sort of thing.

Some of the techs wave at him as he passes their labs. He gets to peer into their microscopes sometimes, gets to analyze bits of fiber and hair. They let him inject samples into the port of the GC/MS equipment and compare the readouts to their endless tables and charts.

“Hey, Scully Junior,” someone calls. “You want to help me out with some PCR today, man?” The voice belongs to one of his mom’s students, a tall woman with freckles on her brown cheeks and wonderful curls like springs. William longs to pull one for the pleasure of watching it bounce back.  


His dad stops to say hello while William tries not to gaze at her hair. “I can’t today,” he says proudly. “Gotta help my mom in the lab.”

“Oooh, nice,” she replies. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”  


They head down the corridor, the smells of phenol and formalin growing stronger. 

“I can smell your mother’s perfume,” his dad says, grinning.

William rolls his eyes at the lame joke. He’s heard it at least a thousand times. Through the swinging double doors and there’s his mother, perched on a stool before a gurney stacked with arms. _Upper limbs,_ corrects her voice in his head.

Her gloves are bloody and William detects the scorched scent of bone dust in the air, but his dad goes over to kiss her anyway. He and another of his mom’s trainees exchange a wrinkle-nosed glance.

They’re so gross _._

Dad rubs his hands together. “Exercising your right to bare arms, I see.”

His mother blinks very slowly.

“Because the arms are _bare,_  Scully.”  


William never knows how to explain his parents to other kids. How weird they are, why they call each other by their last names. They fact that profitable eavesdropping has revealed his mother gave dad the gunshot scar on his shoulder. He shakes his head, returning his attention to the arms and the student.

“You’re certain you’re okay with this, William?” His mother’s eyes are cool and piercing and William feels proud that even though she is a small woman, her eyes can make her students stare at the floor.  


“ _Mooom_ ,” he says, rolling his own blue eyes. “I brought a plasticized brain in for show and tell in first grade.” He had felt like a hero that day, almost three years ago now. But plasticized tissue was kid stuff.

She smiles at him, his dad squeezing his shoulder. “Okay. Well, we’re going to take these outside for burn tests. I want to observe the way they burn with different accelerants, I want to see how fractures look when the skin is gone. Lots of different things. You’re going to assist my students as they get the stations ready, all right?”

William nods, eyeing up the students in the room. They smile at him and he straightens up. He goes over to the wall to get himself gowned up, to show them he belongs here too.

“Do you think we’re arming him too young, Scully?” his father asks. “Because right now he’s ‘armless. But once he’s armed…”

William sighs in his mother’s weary way, shaking his head in disappointment. “Mulder,” he says. “I can’t take you anywhere.


	47. Chapter 47

Prompt: A scenario for the "loaded" Mulder takes Scully’s ha?

***

Scully’s trembling like an aspen leaf, her voice ragged as she narrates her vision. She describes how William went into the sky like his aunt, his mother, his father. How they couldn’t save him, how no one could save him, how he was marked and damned.

“If I hadn’t….if we had kept him,” she chokes. “I think that’s what I saw, Mulder.” She holds her hand out, reaching for his quiet strength.

He does not take it. He looks old to her, and very tired.

“I’m sorry I let you both go,” she says. “I know now that I made the right choice with William. But I made the wrong one with you.” Knees drawn to her chest, Scully stares up at him, waiting for absolution. She sees herself in his eyes, damaged but not broken.

He takes her hand in his at last, a circuit completed, and something sparks to life in the scarred places of her heart.


	48. Chapter 48

Prompt: Your anons love suffering so much and it stresses me out and so do cancer fics. Could you write any msr happy thing? Like they could go to red lobster and have a pretty okay time for all I care just no suffering because my heart hurts.

***

Scully knows it’s condescending to be sad when chain restaurants pop up in small towns, but she can’t help but feel they lose some of their charm when Olive Garden and Don Pablo’s move in.

Nonetheless, she and Mulder are taking advantage of the Red Lobster on a lonely stretch of Indiana highway. Mulder has boldly chosen the Endless Shrimp while she opts for grilled salmon

“The trick is,” he says, swallowing a mouthful of scampi, “is to strategize.”  


Scully sips her Diet Coke, watching him with mild horror. “Pardon?”

“All these carbs, Scully. Bread, potatoes.” Mulder shakes his head. “It’s just cheap filler to reduce shrimp consumption. If you commit to Endless Shrimp you have to stay true to purpose.” He gestures meaningfully with a now-empty skewer.

“So….cheddar bay biscuits are a corporate conspiracy?”  


“Obviously.” 

She leans back in her chair, amused. “And you are fighting The Man by making yourself ill on fried crustaceans?”  


“I’m a crusader for justice,” he says, using up the last of the cocktail sauce.  


Scully considers this for a moment, then helps herself to a handful of his popcorn shrimp. “Never let it be said I allowed evil to prevail.”


End file.
